Many web sites, such as air, train, or car booking sites, use popup windows or data pickers to enhance the web page interface and make selection of data such as dates or locations, easier for the user.
Referring to FIGS. 1A-1D, an example of a popup window 32 used to find and select airport codes in a web page window 10 for booking a flight on a given date is illustrated. As shown in FIG. 1A, the original web page window 10 includes a “From” field 20 to specify the departure location of the flight, a “To” field 22 to specify the arrival destination of the flight, and a “Date” field 24 to specify the departure date of the flight. Additionally, “Find Airport” buttons 26 and 28 are located adjacent “From” field 20 and “To” field 22, respectively, and a “Begin Search” button 30 is located on web page window 10 as well. If a user does not know the code of the departure or arrival airport, the user can press the corresponding one of the “Find Airport” buttons 26 and 28 to search for the airport code.
As shown in FIG. 1B, if either of the “Find Airport” buttons 26 and 28 is engaged, a new popup window 32 with a “Search by city name” field 34 and a “Search” button 36 appears. The user can type in the name of the city in the “Search by city name” field 34 and press the “Search” button 36 to get one or more codes of airport near the entered city, such as “JFK/John F Kennedy International (JFK)” text field 38 and a “LGA/La Guardia (LGA)” text field 40, as shown in FIG. 1C.
When the “JFK/John F Kennedy International (JFK)” text field 38 in the popup window 32 is selected, the code is copied in the “From” field 20 as shown in FIG. 1D and the popup window 32 is closed. These operations of opening the popup window and copying the result value to the original field can only be performed by script enabled web browsers that can open more than one web page at the same time.
Unfortunately, many devices, such as most mobile phones, smart phones, and personal digital assistants (PDAs), do not allow popup windows to be opened because their screen size is too small. Additionally, some desktop web browsers are configured to block popup windows. Further, the scripting capabilities of these devices are often very limited resulting in need for alternative solutions.